What just happened? After posting a video of its in-display selfie camera earlier this month, Oppo has now revealed more of the technology, which it calls Under-Screen Camera (USC), at MWC Shanghai.

Few people are fans of phones with notches or hole-punch cutouts, leading to smartphone makers looking at ways of removing obtrusive elements from the display while retaining a high screen-to-body ratio. One method of doing this is to place the selfie cam beneath the screen, in the same way fingerprint readers have made their way under displays in recent times.

The start of June saw both Xiaomi and Oppo show off clips of their earlier in-display selfie cams, and while neither company revealed how the tech worked, Oppo has now given out more details.

A small screen area sitting above the camera uses a custom, highly transparent material along with a redesigned pixel structure that allows light to get through to the camera. The actual camera unit itself uses a larger sensor with bigger pixels and a wider aperture to capture more light.

Engadget Chinese writes that it in certain conditions, it is possible to see a pixelated area of the screen where the camera resides. It adds that resolution, clarity, and color accuracy all suffer at the expense of the camera being under the screen.

Oppo says its algorithms are in place to help correct issues such as glare and haze, and claims the quality is "on par with mainstream devices."

The first commercial Oppo device with USC tech is set to arrive "in the near future." We'll just have to wait until then before deciding if this really is the next step in smartphone design.